LL-L "Resources" 2003.05.14 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 14.MAY.2003 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Colin Wilson <lcwilson at btinternet.com>
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2003.05.13 (17) [E]

At 23:39 13/05/03, Uilleam Stiùbhart wrote (about the BBC):
>I think it would be quite lucrative for them if they
>started a Scots-speaking service. They could start small,
>and if the audience is there, they could go for it. What say you all?
>Would the Scots go for it?

I don't understand how it would be lucrative: after all, the BBC
receives the same amount of the public's money, regardless of the
nature or quality of its broadcasts.

I can't imagine that a service in Scots could fail to find an
appreciative audience; but the problem is the bias against the
idea within the BBC itself. To illustrate, within the last year
a delegation from the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group for
Scots had a meeting with Maggie Cunningham, the head of BBC Radio
Scotland. Whatever the UK's ratification of the European Charter
might imply, Cunningham began the meeting by trying to argue the
toss over whether Scots ought to be treated as a language. The
delegation insisted that the meeting would end there and then
unless she accepted at least that much. In the end, the best
Cunningham would offer was that her broadcasters would be
"encouraged" to use Scots "as much as possible".

The shortcomings there are obvious. One is that it posits a view
of Scots as something that can be used casually in among English.
Second, its use is still left to individuals' discretion. Last, the
people to whose discretion it is left are people who are only in
their current position through *not* speaking Scots, and are hardly
in a position to start suddenly to use it.

There is also a broader problem with the BBC as an institution. Last
year Greg Dyke, the Director-General of the BBC, admitted that
"unifying the nation remains at the heart of what the BBC does". We
can safely take it that by "nation" he means the pseudo-nation of the
United Kingdom. At least at the time the BBC was good enough to
publish on its web-site my comment that this was "a welcome, if
astonishingly frank, admission of political bias." For readers
elsewhere in the world, I should mention that the BBC is obliged
by its charter to follow a course of political neutrality; evidently
this has its limits.

One final comment, in reply to Uilleam Stiùbhart's earlier question:
I personally prefer not to speak of "independence" for Scotland.
This is what would be given to a colony, which Scotland is not. We're
a participant in a political union, established through a treaty
between equals.

Guidwull tae ane an aw,

Colin Wilson.

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